The Decline and Fall of the Anti-Defamation League

The Alt-Left is at it again. This time they are using their internet and media echo chamber to malign Steve Bannon, concocting a narrative that is false but endlessly repeated by their soldiers in the never ending campaign to malign conservatives and members of the Trump campaign. Playing the race card has become the modus operandi of the liberal/left political world.

Mr. Bannon, who has been appointed Chief White House Advisor and political strategist for Mr. Trump, has been a staunch and reliable friend of Israel and has hired a host of Jewish journalists during his leadership at the conservative Breitbart news magazine. He has been an ardent supporter of the Jewish state at the very moment many liberal Jewish organizations were condemning Israel and spouting fashionable anti-Israel criticisms emanating from the Left.

Like Mr. Trump before him, who for four decades was known as a champion of Israel, generous in charitable contributions to her, and someone who routinely hired Jews and accommodated their religious Sabbath needs, Mr. Bannon is likewise being accused of being anti-Jewish ever since he came on board the Trump Express to install a nationalistic and politically conservative legislative approach at odds with the liberal agenda.

The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) last week accused Mr. Bannon of anti-Semitism because, in their words, he is associated with nationalistic movements and anti-Semitic white supremacist groups. He is not associated with any anti-Semitic groups, though he is, like me, an American nationalist. After being forced to supply concrete evidence of anti-Semitism, the ADL backtracked slightly and only accused him of countenancing anti-Semitism.

In its founding years the ADL’s task was to fight anti-Semitism, but in the last few decades it has, like other establishment Jewish organizations, become an ideological arm of the Democratic Party, carrying its water for them, and viewing all of American life through the prism of a neo-leftist agenda no longer rooted in classical liberalism.

Thus for them, as seen in their publications, the innocuous term “western values” becomes a code phrase for excluding non-whites, and the term “America First” becomes a racist code phrase. To most Americans, however, putting America and its citizens first is the most natural thing a nation should try doing — be it regarding jobs, physical security or pride in America’s historic outlook and values, in this case our founding principles and Judeo-Christian ethos.

While the ADL considers the predilection towards nationalism a disguised attempt to exclude Jews and others, to most sane people nationalism is pride in one’s country and her values, which in America’s case is something to be proud of, indeed. Loving one’s country, its western values, or pride and comfort in one’s ethnicity or race (even if white) are not disqualifying features in a human being. Those who see in American individuals proud of their Christian faith or their European ancestry people to be feared are themselves either very insecure or harbor a bigotry and discomfort with those in the majority. Truth be told, in liberal establishment organizational circles, the feeling is that nobility and fair-mindedness resides only in minority communities while the majority, in this case Christian and whites, are automatically suspect unless they prove otherwise, with advocating liberalism and cultural self-effacement as their only redeemable option.

The new head of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, is a former member of the Obama administration and, like so many heading up today’s establishment Jewish organizations, a high level advocate for left liberalism and in consonance with the Soros agenda and many of the disturbing societal upheavals sponsored by Soros. This despite the known quote where Soros calls his collaboration with the Nazis in Hungary during WW II “an exciting and happy time for him.”

Like so many others, the non-observant, secular Jewish leadership have replaced Judaism with liberalism, giving liberalism transcendence above all else, making political liberalism its new religion and calling. In fact, Greenbaltt and the ADL have recently become eager and severe critics of Israel’s necessary defense policies — and may be indicative of an alarming trend in the secular Jewish community of abandoning Israel when in conflict with the socialism and multi-culturalism that it holds dearer than religious doctrnes.

After the election showed that many Orthodox Jews voted for Mr. Trump because of years of humiliating anti-Israel bias in the Obama administration, as well as Obama’s and Mrs. Clinton’s enabling and masterminding Iran’s catapult to a nuclear power, many Manhattan Jewish liberals have begun speaking of their desire to “forget Israel’s needs if it makes the liberal agenda harder to realize: vote liberal, for the liberal agenda reigns supreme above all else”.

During the 2012 Democratic National Convention there were tremendous boos when support of Israel and Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal capital were proposed. This was done, as seen on TV, by hundreds of delegates. Indeed, Black Lives Matter has spoken in rabid anti-Jewish and anti Israel terms. The ADL has not denounced them and seemingly remains sympathetic, just as have Clinton and Obama. The ADL and the Reform Jewish Movement knew full well of Obama’s association with the notorious anti-Semites Rev. Wright, Rashid Kahlidi, and Al Sharpton.

Yet, no matter the preponderance of anti-Israel leading lights on the Left and thousands of anti-Jewish people found in the Democratic Party, the ADL and the Reform Jewish denomination retain their affiliation and affection for the leftwing community, ignoring its blatant anti-Semitism. Both organizations have been silent over the years regarding the harassment of Jewish students at the direction of Muslim organizations on college campus and, similarly, quiet about the threats to Jews and synagogues coming from mostly Muslim individuals and groups. Yet, the ADL is now sponsoring conferences with the specific intent of people finding and reporting acts of anti-Semitism it implies are coming from Trump supporters. It seems that harassment of Jews can be overlooked by the Jewish Alt-left if coming from a “minority” community.

The Jewish members of the Alt-left are eager to turn neutral and positive phrases into anti-Semitism and cast friends like Bannon and Trump (Trump with religious Jewish grandchildren) into figures to be feared, jeered, and demonized outside the pale…as “deplorables.” Why? Because they have sold their soul to the ideology of leftism and class warfare. It has become their identity. Their power resides in the Democratic Party, and power is a powerful aphrodisiac.

These organizations have not, and will never genuinely accept the results of the election. They will try to stop Trump’s policies, and thwart the will of the people they consider inferior and uneducated, by tarring and discrediting Trump’s people and appointees as racist and anti-Semitic. Too many are whipping themselves up into hysteria based on prejudicial presumptions they themselves have created over the years. They are setting up tribunals that label their opponents hate-mongers when, in reality, they themselves have become bigoted and act hateful. We should no longer allow them to impugn good, patriotic individuals.

Unlike what the ADL, the Alt-left and the Reform Jewish movement claim, the American people voted for Mr. Trump not out of racism or anti-Semitism, but because they and their families had become voiceless and ignored, cannon fodder, the forgotten people, with legitimate needs that were for decades dismissed by the elites and now, finally, championed by Mr. Trump and his newly appointed advisor, Steve Bannon. May God bless them and their work for America.

[Originally published in The American Thinker, November 2016]

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Rabbi Aryeh Spero

Rabbi Spero, who also served as a pulpit rabbi, has been invited to inform policy-makers, candidates, and elected officials in the halls of Congress, and in the Executive, regarding the moral and religious dimensions of policies and legislation under consideration.